Short Story by Yudhi Herwibowo
Translated by Liswindio Apendicaesar
Published Jakarta Post 2018
Narrator : Ilona Joline Surjoraharjo
Music Illustration Liston P. Siregar

I hear him whisper slowly, “Where is my big sister?”

I’m not sure whether the question is meant for me, so I remain silent. Deep down, I want to ask the same question, but I know it’s no use. I’ve asked it so many times before, both in my silence and by whispering painfully just like the boy next to me. I once tried screaming it out loud as well, but it ended up only hurting my throat.

Nobody answers our painful loss. Ever.

I remember the day I got separated from my big sister. We went to night market. “We will find many customers there,” she said.

I smiled. “Will we make a lot of money? May I buy cotton candy later?”

“Of course. You can buy as much as you want.”

The night market was too crowded. Since entering the first gate, it already was difficult for us to get through. My sister had to grip my hand firmly. “You don’t let go.”

I obeyed her. I tried my best to grip her hand as well, but the ocean of humans was too much to handle. I got swayed due to the jostle of the crowd, and eventually my hand was slipped from hers. Within seconds, I was stranded far away from my sister.

I tried to call out to her, but the only answer I could get was from the dangdut singer performing on the stage: Buka sitik jooosss… (take off the clothes slightly, oh yeah…)

“Sisteeeeeer…” I screamed again in vain.

I started crying and asking for people around me to care and help, but they looked disgusted by my presence and drove me away.

The night was getting late. People began leaving home and it started to get quieter. Suddenly a woman approached me, she asked me, “Did you lose your sister?”

I looked at her. I thought she was an angel. Her smile suddenly reminded me to my late mother. Her big eyes, her thin and tall figure, also her soft voice, they all resembled my mother’s.

I nodded cheerfully.

***

“Where did my sister go?” the boy lying down next to me asks again. Now I know the question is directed at me.

A moment before, he chose to say nothing. Apparently he was trying to adjust himself to our current helpless situation but it made him anxious and nervous, so he broke the silence.

I want to turn to him, but I can’t. Hesitantly I only answer, “I don’t know. I’ve lost my sister as well.”

He is silenced for a moment. “Why did our sisters disappear?” he asks again. “This friend of mine also has lost her sister, just like you and me.”

I don’t say a word. I can’t see any kid next to him. It’s too dark to see anything at all.

“Maybe, they don’t want to see us anymore.”

I’m surprised by his words. I disagree, of course. I am certain my sister is nothing like that.

I remember when my mother passed away due to chronic illness; there were only both of us left. We were so little and social service decided to put us in the orphanage.

My sister refused it. “It is a hell!” she whispered to me in scary but trembling voice. “We may be fed regularly, but we are to obey them. You remember Umira who went there last year, don’t you? She died after the orphanage staffers raped her.”

I frowned confusedly, “r… ra… ped?”

She realized with her choice of words and immediately corrected it, “the orphanage staffers did terrible things to her.”

I nodded as trying to digest her explanation, imagining how Umira was treated  badly.

“Listen, Mimi,” my sister continued her story, “Umira died after she fell while she was trying to escape from the place. If orphanage is a pleasant place, she wouldn’t have run away, would she?”

Before the officers came, we were already gone. Since then, we’re homeless joining other kids begging for people’s kindness.

***

“Hey?” the boy shouts at me.

“Yes?”

“I’ve promised myself if I could meet my sister again, I wouldn’t be a naughty kid anymore.”

I didn’t know what to respond. I’ve always obeyed my sister ever since before my mom died. She’s a good sister, always brought me something, be it a slice of watermelon, a stick of cotton candy, or some robot toys made of plastic. I would never think of disobeying her.

However, I once didn’t listen to her. I didn’t want to be left at home back at the time only waiting for her to come home. I insisted to go with her.

“Hey,” the voice of the boy brings me back from my flashback about my sister, “why don’t you say anything? Are you making a promise as well?”

***

“Hey, have we met before somewhere else but here?” The boy asks me.

I can’t answer him. All I know is I was taken to a big mansion that seemed like a haunted house by a woman who had promised me that I could meet my sister. However, the moment I got there, I realized that she had tricked me. My sister wasn’t there, and that woman disappeared. I really wanted to cry, but seeing people who looked like scary giant around the mansion made me hold back because they would slap and torture anyone however they liked.

I was then put inside a big room that the light could barely get inside. I saw some other kids the same age as me terrified; some other looked ill and most of them cried so much.

“I can’t remember you either,” the boy interrupted my reverie. “I always cried in that room.”

Finally I remember the kid who always cried back at that room. Most of the healthy kids inside of the room tried to calm him down. I didn’t want to bother to care about him, it’s his own business, but the gatekeepers outside scolded at us.

“If he keeps crying, there will be no meals for all of you!”

“Please, be quiet!” I tried to care for my meals. It was rather awkward to order a kid same age as me. “Do you want us to be starved to death?”

He responded to my words by lifting his head. “I want to, but I can’t,” he answered me while sobbing. “I know we all here are about to die.”

“You’re just a crybaby!” another kid interrupted him. “Stop scarifying other kids! We all know they will only send us into illegal forced labor…”

“They’re all deceivers!” nobody expected him to talk back. “To begin with we were deceived, that’s why we’re here. There’s no way this time they’d tell the truth.”

Everyone understood him clearly. I knew that the very reason I was there because the woman had deceived me.

“One more thing to make you all assured,” he added. “Try to breathe deeply. You’ll smell blood.”

We did what he told us, but I couldn’t smell anything suspicious. One of the kids, however, surprisingly agreed with him. “He’s right”, said he hesitantly. “I lived in abattoir, and I know for sure. This is the smell of blood.”

***

A silence descends. The boy who talked a lot before doesn’t speak a word anymore. It feels scarier, especially as I vaguely hear a howling. Apparently even the subtlest sound can reach here as it’s so quiet.

I don’t want to ask my sister’s whereabouts anymore. Now that I think of it, it’s better for her not to be here but in our old place. Although it would be somewhat cold there, but she can go anywhere she wants. Moreover, people can give her money.

I believe I’ve met my end here. I don’t know how many children are here, but I think everyone has given up. Nobody asks where their sisters or brothers anymore, or whoever it is. Everybody just stays silent.

As I was busy with my own thought, suddenly I hear turmoil from above. I can’t be sure of what it is, but the soil that has been suppressing me slightly loosens. I suspect someone is digging down from up there.

I’m no longer squeezed. The soil being moved from up there makes my position change and my hand now touches the face of the boy next to me. Now I’m sure he’s the same boy who cried so much back in the dim room. He’s lost his eyes just like I’ve lost mine; the grains of soil have filled them. I bet he also has cutlet on his body, that his internal organs have been taken away, just like what has happened to me.

Suddenly a solid hard thing hits me as the soil has stopped being moved. “I’ve found something!” I hear someone yells, followed by some steps coming closer.

They try to get rid all of the soil from my body until they can see my body and others’ clearly, lied down helplessly in this big pit.

“Oh my Goodness…” someone sounds shocked. “That cursed doctor buried all of his victims down here.” []